Beyond the boundaries of journalism

Thanks for your question, Mike. I think I take second to none when it comes to defense of journalism and free speech.

This scheme deserves no such defense. It is about neither journalism nor free speech.

This situation was about an antiabortion group (the Center for Medical Progress) creating a phony business (Biomax Procurement Services) pretending to be in the market for fetal parts for scientific research. The actors from Biomax not only misrepresented themselves to Planned Parenthood before meeting with its representatives, they actually signed confidentiality agreements before attending a National Abortion Federation meeting.

As any entry-level journalism student knows, Rule No. 1 is that you don’t misrepresent yourself to obtain information. An equally unforgivable sin of another cardinal rule of the profession — “accuracy, accuracy, accuracy” — was the intentional selectivity in editing the surreptitiously recorded videos to skew reality.

Just because Center for Medical Progress leader David Daleiden insisted that his ploy was “investigative journalism” does not make it so. It is not. Even a mainstream news organization would be in legal trouble here. The First Amendment endows great deference to freedom of the press, but journalists are not immune from all boundaries of decency or the law. California law is quite clear in requiring permission of all parties before audio or video recording of conversations — a point that is etched into most newspaper policies, including The Chronicle’s.

-U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco last week issued a temporary restraining order out of the concern for the safety of abortionrights leaders at who were secretly recorded at their national meeting. A Los Angeles judge earlier issued an order blocking the release of video the center supposedly took of Stem-Express, a California firm that provides fetal tissue to researchers.

These clandestine videos, obtained under false pretenses, simply do not deserve a free-speech defense.

A reader called me and left a message on my answering machine, in rebuttal to my letter ... is it really necessary to list a letter writer’s city in the newspaper?

This is an issue that comes up rarely, fortunately, and cuts to the heart of the question on why we request — and verify — the identity of letter writers. The Bay Area is blessed with many great thinkers and writers, some famous and some not, who contribute letters to the editor.

The difference between people who stand behind their words and those who do not is reflected in the level of substance and thoughtfulness in the newspaper versus online comments on stories. The online comments tend to not only be more personalized, and sometimes vile, there is no way of knowing if they are being dominated by one person with multiple avatars.

I realize, as someone whose e-mail and voice-mail messages are filled daily, that there is a cost to expressing a controversial view in public. I share the concern of the latest reader to bring this to our attention, but I nevertheless must err on the side of maintaining a robust forum with identifiable participants. I salute those who engage in these public discussions, and deplore those who would try to make it a regrettable experience.

How do you decide which candidates make the cut for an interview?

This question arises each election, especially those in which San Francisco has 20 or more candidates for mayor (as it did in 2011) or a seat on the Board of Supervisors.

The balancing act came to mind while watching Fox News decide how to handle the 17 candidates for the Republican presidential candidate. Fox went with the average of five national polls to develop a two-tier plan for its initial debate: the top 10 in prime time, and the other seven at happy hour.

There may be no perfect solution to this struggle between fairness to all candidates and focus for voters, but the best strategy I’ve found in an overcrowded field is to bring them all in and allow them to question each other. You immediately see who is the frontrunner, who the front-runner most fears and the ability of the candidates to ask pointed questions in a civil way.

However, I must commend the three Fox panelists for keeping Thursday’s event lively and substantive with wellcrafted, pointed questions.

“Where is the outrage over the censorship of a federal judge of a pro-life group releasing videos exposing Planned Parenthood practices? Does the First Amendment, in the eyes of the Chron, only apply to those who are ‘politically correct’ ”?

— Mike McAdoo, San Francisco